Keep Tiffany's Killer Jailed

as reported by the Enquirer

HAMILTON – A year ago, after Marcus Fiesel died in foster care, then-commissioner Mike Fox was quick to blame Butler County’s Children Services for the deaths of several children who were supposed to be watched by caseworkers.

Tiffany Hubbard, who was 3 when she was raped and fatally beaten by her father in 1986, was on that list.

Now, as the agency’s new executive director, Fox is taking a different approach
Tuesday, Fox teamed up with the child’s mother, Sherrie Jackson, in a campaign to stop the man who killed Tiffany from being released on parole.

In a first for the agency, Fox wrote a letter to the Ohio Parole Board opposing parole for Jeffery Hubbard, 43, who has spent 21 years behind bars for the sexual abuse and systematic beatings that killed Tiffany.Fox said he plans to write similar letters every time someone who hurts a Butler County child tries to get out of prison early.

Hubbard is incarcerated at Chillicothe Correctional Institution and was classified as a sexual predator in 2003. His parole hearing is supposed to be Monday or Tuesday, according to state corrections officials. So far, the parole board has received four letters and a petition with 750 signatures to keep Hubbard in prison, spokeswoman JoEllen Lyons said.

“Every part of this poor child’s body was bruised, battered and scarred outside and even inside, because of the perverted sexual molestation that Jeffery Hubbard committed against his own child,” Fox said.“She spent the last hours of her days on earth on a cold bathroom floor where the adults in the home literally stepped over her to use the bathroom. Twenty-one years should not obscure the horror or the violence Jeffery Hubbard inflicted on Tiffany.”

Tiffany died Sept. 30, 1986, from gangrene when the wounds she suffered from continuous beatings became infected. She had been living with her father for 27 days. Butler County Children Services had taken the child away from Jackson alleging poor living conditions.

Butler County Juvenile Court Judge David Niehaus placed Tiffany with Hubbard even though a psychologist’s report cautioned against it, and despite Hubbard’s juvenile conviction at 17 for molesting a 7-year-old.

A caseworker tried to visit Tiffany a few days before her death, but didn’t insist on seeing the child when she was told Tiffany was sleeping.Jackson, who initially sued children services, the juvenile court judge and caseworkers shortly after Tiffany’s death, contacted Fox within the last two weeks about helping keep Hubbard in prison.

She also enlisted the aid of Madge Burton, an Oxford resident who started the support and advocacy group Victims United when her two daughters and a grand daughter were stabbed to death in 1984.

Jackson said she hoped Fox’s position might help persuade the parole board.“I want him to stay behind bars,” the 38-year-old mother of five adult children said. “He shouldn’t be allowed to roam the streets. He didn’t give Tiffany a chance to roam the streets. He didn’t give her a chance to grow up.”Burton also said Hubbard shouldn’t be given a second chance.“He showed all of Butler County the real face of evil,” she said.

related: Group opposes convict's parole